The Rudolphs

I came to Chicago in the fall of 1968, a small-town girl from southern Illinois and none too happy to be going to Chicago after the debacle of the Democratic convention. I was on the cusp of the feminist period and was madly in love with a young man who was putting a great deal of pressure on me to quickly complete an MA and transfer to Harvard so we could get married. I found Chicago a cold, anomic environment and that first year in grad school was one of the more painful years for me, as I compacted all my identity crises into one miserable year wrestling with what I wanted to do with my life. I had always planned on being a lawyer, had never intended to get a Ph.D., and had no idea what social science was. But I realized that the courses I was taking at Chicago were incredible and that I simply couldn't leave. I had no clue where I was going or what I was pursuing, but I knew I was happier intellectually than I'd ever been before and I wasn't going to lose that. It was like leaping in the dark, not knowing if there were a net or even an opposite spot on which to land.

In the midst of this adolescent soul searching, I wandered into a course on India, taught by Lloyd and Susanne. Both were incredible teachers with lectures that inspired and such a fine reading list I actually reread everything—except one book on the history of the Indian railroad system—before my first three-day take-home test, a new and terrifying form of examination for me.

I ended up taking every course the Rudolphs taught, from their course on the bureaucracy to my favorite: Subjection, Domination, and Equality: A study of the Asymmetrical Relationship. It began with psychological readings on identity and its formation and moved to analyze four asymmetrical relationships, three of which were the usual suspects: colonialism, racism, and sexism. It was the fourth asymmetrical relationship—age—that blew me away. That was one of the things I liked best about the Rudolphs, their ability to show me the world in a different way. We read Aries's Centuries of Childhood, suggesting children were people who were often treated as subservient human beings. That course cost me a lot with my own kids, I can tell you, but it opened my eyes to something that made a profound difference in my own life, and the lives of three amazing children and my—often tired—husband. I recently taught a course on the politics of difference and used age as the wedge issue, to show the students how differences may exist but that their ethical and political significance are socially constructed. I followed the Rudolphs' interdisciplinary example in blending social science, especially psychology, with literature and encouraged the students to do narrative interviews with a grandparent and then analyze the interviews, in order to bring a personal component to the course.

Perhaps even more important than their intellectual contribution, and their professional advice and help over the years, however, was the Rudolphs' importance as role models. I had grown up in a society where men had fascinating careers and women raised the children. I could point to no couple I knew who combined the kind of supportive, loving marriage I wanted with the kind of career I desired—until I met Lloyd and Susanne. One day, in the spring of 1969, Susanne was on stage lecturing and Lloyd happened to be sitting across the aisle from me. At one point Susanne evaluated a theory in light of empirical evidence, saying, “I'm far too maternal to throw out the baby with the bathwater …” I instinctively looked at Lloyd, who smiled at me and whispered, “She is. We have three.” Thereafter, whenever any of the young men in my life suggested it would be difficult to combine a career and a family and that I needed to choose, I would stubbornly retort, “Well, Susanne Rudolph did it and I think maybe I can do it, too.” The unspoken text was that a smart woman would find a man like Lloyd.

I was much too shy to ever tell Susanne or Lloyd this. I was too straitlaced even to talk about personal things with a professor, being one of those students who seldom went to office hours to ask about anything except the most directly related course work matters. It wasn't until 1982, after my first son was born, that I screwed up my courage to write Susanne to tell her what her mere existence had meant to me. I don't think I ever did tell Lloyd how much I valued his comment and his model of a truly supportive, liberated male. Fortunately, I later reconnected with the Rudolphs professionally and we became friends so I hope they know how I feel about them. If not, here it is, officially and in print: Thanks, Susanne and Lloyd. You showed me several doors that changed my life.

Joe Cropsey

I don't remember how or where I met Joe. I worked for Morton Kaplan and had an office across the hall from Joe's. Both of us are friendly and I imagine we just started smiling and saying hello in the halls. I suspect one day we engaged in some conversation and I ended up in the chair in his office, next to his big desk, and we began what has developed into a life-long conversation and friendship. It was an unlikely friendship. I never took a course with Joe, am not a Straussian or even a classically trained political theorist, and probably we disagree on roughly 50% of the political issues that come down the pike. But both Joe and I always respected these differences. He never tried to impose his views on me; he always listened carefully and would respond to my arguments—as I did to his—and encouraged me to think for myself and to go with my intellectual instincts. I tease Joe that I am the intellectual child of his wild-oats fling with economics, since his Ph.D. is in economics and many of our conversations were about Adam Smith, the Enlightenment, and the foundational or philosophical assumptions of economics, political science, and social science. Joe chaired my thesis committee, which prompted several puzzled phone calls when I was on the market. “What ARE you doing in your thesis? It looks like an interesting econometric model of political popularity, but then we see you have Joe Cropsey as your chair and we're confused.” I would explain that Duncan MacRae had left for North Carolina, Bob Fogel was in economics, and therefore Joe was the only member of the committee in my home department. The truth was that Joe has a beautiful mind and incredible respect and warmth for students and I instinctively recognized how important that is in an advisor. Later, as I segued from the econometric modeling aspect of political economy to asking whether our theories of politics were too influenced by the assumption that self-interest is an intrinsic part of human nature, and began my work on altruism, all those informal conversations with Joe doubtless percolated back into my consciousness. When I sent him a copy of The Heart of Altruism I wrote simply on the title page, “See. I was listening.” I still am, although the lesson these days is intensely personal, as I watch a sensitive human being deal with loss. It's the hardest lesson, about both the solace and limitations of work and friendship in alleviating personal grief; a lesson about what it means to be a human being. At Joe's feschrift, someone said Joe always made us think about how we are with each other and how we are with ourselves. Surely this ability strikes at the heart of mentoring.

David Easton

David Easton was a dominant force at Chicago but—oddly—was someone I met only after graduate school, when Jack Dennis invited me to a conference on political support. I was as much in awe of David as most people are on meeting him. (When Kim Campbell, a political scientist before becoming prime minister of Canada, visited Irvine, she greeted David by saying, “I'm not sure whether to shake your hand or genuflect.”) David is very charming and especially welcoming to young scholars and we began a correspondence. I received a particularly touching letter shortly after I married, when David told me how important a good marriage is, not the least because it provides the emotional security to take chances intellectually. We became close friends when I moved to Irvine in 1984, and David and Sylvia functioned as second parents for me as they did for many of the young faculty, with Sylvia bringing Advent calendars each December, filled with chocolate for the children. Over the years, I think poor David has read every major work I've ever written, always providing insightful, practical advice and encouraging me to take chances, see connections, be bold. When I finished The Heart of Altruism, I asked David's advice on the last chapter, where I wanted to raise many unanswered questions. Should I include these questions, or just stop the book with a nicely rounded analysis of altruism? “Oh, no. Of course you want to raise the difficult issues. You want to be as controversial as you can.” Actually, I assured David, I did not want to be controversial. I had much more modest aims and was happy just to get my book published. But David always pushed me to look more deeply, to not be frightened of acknowledging all the questions I still had, to constantly try to move and grow intellectually, to find connections in whatever places I could, even if that took me into new fields, forcing me to deal with literatures I knew poorly, leaving me groping in unfamiliar places, revealing how little I knew. What was important—he taught me—was the process, the generation of ideas and the sharing of knowledge so that other scholars could learn from what I did know, build on my errors, fill in the gaps I couldn't answer. David was gently initiating me into a scholarly community that extended back beyond Aristotle and will go on far beyond my lifetime.

David's life embodies this membership in the eternal community of scholars, with his own work on the history of the discipline embracing the past and reaching out to the future. Having dinner with David and a job candidate is both fascinating and a bit frightening for there is a magic moment when—at least to the trained eye—you can see the gloves coming off as David zeroes in on weaknesses in the argument and pushes the candidate to go beyond the conventional and re-examine paradigms, constantly pushing forward.

As much as I respect these incredible scholars for their intellect and their integrity as teachers, I treasure their kindness and the model they provided as human beings even more, if that is possible. When my father was killed suddenly in a car accident six days after I had submitted my thesis, Joe tracked down my mother's phone number and called to say how very sorry he was. The Rudolphs helped when my eldest son—bizarrely—got into trouble with his University of Chicago resident head after Alex and a friend broke up a date rape. And I remember how David, visiting after Nicholas was born, realized our older son was feeling a little neglected as everyone oohed and aahed over the new baby. David slid off the rocking chair and grinned at Alex, “If you run as hard as you can, do you think you can knock me over?” Alex's face lighted up. As Alex's powerful four-year-old body hurled itself full force toward David, the thought that flashed through my mind was, “I'm going to be known in the profession as the woman whose child killed David Easton.”

Fortunately, that has not been my claim to fame. But I'm proud to be known as a student of these superb scholars. I'm still listening, still learning from their mentorship. They showed me a world I never knew existed. They nurtured me with their intellect, their sage advice, their friendship. Their lives continue to inspire me. My hope for my students, for all young political scientists, is that they will find mentors who do the same for them.